The most interesting news to come out of Nvidia's two-hour-plus press conference Sunday night was doubtlessly the Tegra 4 mobile processor, followed closely by its intriguing Project Shield tablet-turned-handheld game console. However, company CEO Jen-Hsun Huang also revealed a small morsel of news about the cloud gaming initiative that Nvidia talked up back in May: the Nvidia Grid, the company's own server designed specifically to serve as the back-end for cloud gaming services.

Thus far, virtualized and streaming game services have not set the world on fire. OnLive probably had the highest profile of any such service, and though it continues to live on, it has been defined more by its troubled financial history than its success.

We stopped by Nvidia's CES booth to get some additional insight into just how the Grid servers do their thing and how Nvidia is looking to overcome the technical drawbacks inherent to cloud gaming services.

What it is and how it works

The company's intent with Grid is to supply an entirely self-contained system that requires no extra hardware or software to do its job, so a rack of Grid servers actually has a couple of different building blocks.

The main block of the Nvidia Grid system is the gaming server itself, a 2U rack-mountable box containing 12 Nvidia GPUs each capable of supporting two simultaneous users (for a total of 24 users per box.) To support more users, you simply add more boxes. These servers are likely using a variant of the same technology driving Nvidia's VGX graphics cards, which also promise cloud-based 3D graphics performance but focus on workstation applications rather than gaming. Each server rack (see above) can hold 20 of these servers, for a total of 480 users per rack, and each server consumes between 800 and 900 watts of power under load.

Coordinating the different Grid servers is handled by a separate "master" server, known as the management server. This handles things like user authentication, distribution of user sessions across servers, database storage for user credentials and information, and a few other things. Nvidia recommends that each 20-server Grid rack should be paired with one management server, which should balance the load effectively as well as provide redundancy.

Nvidia wants the process of running games on the Grid system to be as easy as possible for its partners and developers—as such, both the gaming servers and management servers are powered by Windows Server, so the games being streamed are just standard Windows PC games identical to the ones you'd play on your PC locally.

Battling lag

The biggest concern with any cloud gaming setup is latency, and Nvidia is bringing its experience in GPU-assisted computing to bear to reduce it, at least on the server end: the 720p and 1080p H.264 video streams that are sent to the user are actually encoded directly on the Grid server's GPU, rather than being sent to a separate server dedicated exclusively to the task of video encoding (and in so doing, increasing the likelihood of lag.) So how much faster is it than, say, OnLive's current system?

"[OnLive's] current implementation uses external hardware encoding, which takes a while," GeForce Grid product manager Andrew Fear told Ars. "When you're doing it like we're doing, on the GPU, it saves about 20ms of time for encoding over that. Also, through our drivers, we have a fast-pass recapturing encoding which saves another 10ms, so we can save about 30ms on the server. On the decode side, if we detect an Nvidia GPU, either a Tegra or a Geforce, we can use their decoder pack, which is also optimized, to save about 10 ms on the decode side. So overall we can save about 40 ms."

On the user's end, Nvidia says that users should only need about 6Mbps download speeds to enjoy smooth 720p video streams, a speed that should be well within reach for most cable and many DSL subscribers. When I asked whether the servers would support lower-quality or Netflix-style adaptive streaming to account for slower (or inconsistent) Internet connections, I didn't get a clear answer—the company is most interested in delivering clear 720p and 1080p video streams, even when playing on a small smartphone screen (just in case that small screen happens to be connected to a larger monitor or television). Whether the user can choose between 720p and 1080p streams (or other resolutions) will be left up to the service providers.

In theory, the service seems to work quite smoothly. Everything in the Grid section of the company's booth—a mix of smartphones, tablets, monitors, and televisions—was running off of one Grid server, which was delivering crisp lag-free images to everything. All of that said, there are still plenty of moving parts not present in Nvidia's booth—actual server load, large-scale implementations, and distance between the server and the user—that could all still make the service too laggy to be satisfying in the real world.

Convenience, not performance

To further improve the consistency of the service, the number of computing resources dedicated to each user is constant whether one user or 24 users are using the Grid server—this differs from many enterprise-class virtualization products, which can dynamically allocate CPU cycles or RAM or other resources to users based on server load.

The upside is that users should notice no differences in graphics quality or performance regardless of how many people are playing on a given server at a time. The downside is that graphical quality is fixed and generally won't exceed that of a mid-range gaming desktop—if you do the math from Nvidia's slide, 200 TFLOPS per rack divided by 240 GPUs divided by two users per GPU comes out to around 417 GFLOPS of performance per user, roughly equivalent to one of the weaker GeForce GT 640 cards according to this handy table (or nearly twice the raw graphics performance of an Xbox 360, a common comparison point for graphics performance throughout CES). Nvidia still wants to sell its GeForce cards, after all, so gamers who want the best visuals are still going to be pushed in that direction.

The Grid server system (and the services that are powered by it) are intended, rather, to bring PC gaming to places where it couldn't otherwise go: namely smartphones, tablets, and low-end PCs. Nvidia's own Grid demo during the keynote was run on an Android tablet tethered to a Bluetooth gamepad. Nvidia also wants to have clients available for even more devices, including smart TVs and set-top boxes—anything that can decode an H.264 stream and connect to an input device can, theoretically, become a gaming PC.

Content is still king

It's worth noting that all Nvidia is doing with the Grid is providing the backend for a cloud gaming service—it will be up to partners to purchase the servers, build services, and then convince developers and publishers to make their games available on those services. That more than anything has been the biggest drawback of cloud gaming services so far: they simply can't compete with what's available on the virtual store shelves of an established store like Steam. A few partners—Agawi, CloudUnion, Cyber Cloud, G-Cluster, Playcast, and Ubitus—were announced at the keynote on Sunday, but only Agawi is based in the United States and none of them are large.

Nvidia is selling dev kits comprised of one management server and two gaming servers to its partners now at an undisclosed price, and this is where the technology will ether flourish or languish. Nvidia envisions cloud gaming services that are as affordable, reliable, and widely-used as Netflix is today; all they need to do it is buy-in from the people who actually make games.

Promoted Comments

Yeah, the scaling doesn't work out financially. An entire rack for 480 users just isn't the economy of scale that can serve enough users to overcome fixed costs. Compare to, say, a database where one box can serve 10000 users (I know, apples, oranges, but still...).

There needs to be another jump in miniaturization and density for this to gain traction.

This looks like Nvidia are a stone's throw away from a built-in IPKVM. If they could extend that down to consumer level hardware (and it looks like they're almost there) it'd be great. They seem part of the way there with Shield, but standalone applications for other PCs/devices would make it much more useful than just games.

This is why I don't care for OnLive or whatnot. On top of latency you're at the whim of and dependent on the 3rd party service. At least with traditional games I have a copy of it locally I can make use of.

While this does improve the possibility of a service like on-live, it doesn't eliminate the remaining issues. Depending on how far these boxes are away from the end-user, a 50ms input delay is pretty bad. (not to be confused with 50ms of lag in game, which is mitigated by correction on the software side). For some games it might be acceptable, but don't expect FPS shooters or racers to be ideal candidates.

Also, without dynamic scaling, this seems like a pretty high cost proposition too. That rack alone can only handle <500 users..... scaling up to say...500,000 people would be a LOT of hardware. Certainly not out of the question, but I wonder how the hardware cost per user compares to other solutions.

I can definitely say i'm VERY excited about cloud based GPU rendering for a variety of things, but am holding off my excitement for live gaming on the cloud for a while still. Regardless, i'm happy companies are pushing the tech.

Merge this with Onlive and you've got a really solid next gen platform !

-freedom to relay your own stuff as you please without intermediary CHECK-access to games you own when your homebox is too far from you / not turned on / doing something else CHECK-netflix style content all you can eat CHECK-inherent support for Steam CHECK (double check if steam integrates and cross licences with onlive)-client support not super optimal but functional on non Nvidia hardware CHECK

OnLive by Nvidia i can live with that

Besides the somewhat nonversatile design of the screen on the Shield i thought just slapping the nvidia logo on there isn't clear and strong enough of a brand.

Now if they could be the content providing arm of nvidia the company could evolve the next gen xbox

Nvidia / Valve / Onlive What a beauty of fairly open platform, infrastructure and set of services they could be if working towards a scope of goals together.

6 mb needed for only 720p? I guess I won't be participating in services like this. At least with streaming video services like Netflix you can buffer the video and still get decent video quality on low bandwidth connections.

It's actually surprisingly good, considering the inherit limitations. It's probably the best we can do with networking technology.

The following are gonna be issues with this kind of service:

-Hiding connection issues is a lot more difficult. In a game rendered on the client, latency can be cleverly hidden by using some prediction algorithms in the client. Small, temporary lag spikes may not even be noticed. With something like this, where it's basically streamed video, there's no way whatsoever to hide connection issues, and even a small lag spike will be very noticeable as either corrupted video or a noticeable frame drop.

-You will get more latency, period. Your mouse movements and keyboard presses have to be sent to a server somewhere. Hopefully close. But no matter what, it's still further than that cable to your case, or those internal circuits. Good bandwidth will certainly help make the lag less noticeable, but it's still there.

-Compression artifacts. You'd need close to 3 Gbps to stream 1080p uncompressed. Until we all have 3 Gbps connections, we're going to have to deal with compression artifacts. Fast moving games like Quake will suffer the most. And we're starting to talk 4K video now, which is gonna be a whole new ballgame I'm sure.

-No offline support. Being that it's not being rendered locally anymore, if the connection is ever completely gone, so is your ability to use the service.

If there's one thing that I like to do when the connection's out and I realistically can't do anything else - it's play games. I'd prefer to keep things that way. Thus, I'll likely stick to services like Steam which allow me to download a local copy.

If Valve offered this service with Steam - where I could play games on the cloud or on my PC at my discretion - and I knew that's the direction the market would take, I would be more excited about this.

But I'm reminded of a line from Star Wars Episode 3: "So this is how liberty dies..."

I'm way more excited by localized cloud gaming. Setting up a gaming server in my own home that I can stream to my laptop, tablets, etc, as well as having multiple copies of the game running at a time for local multiplayer.

Cloud gaming is a great idea, I would just rather be in control of the cloud I'm gaming on.

I have a very excellent gaming rig at home, but have never bought a gaming laptop because I never saw the value in it. Depending on the price, I might be interested in doing something like this, especially if I could play the same games I have on Steam. It'd be kinda cool to be able to take my small, portable, work-focused laptop over to the couch and load up a game like Shogun 2 Total War, one that I can get away with 100ms of lag or so.

On the other hand, their recently announced shield would let me use my own computer as a GRID server, if you will. So maybe that would be a better route in my case. Hell, I have 10mb upload too, so I'd probably be fine on the road as well!

So I don't yet know if nVidia is building complimentary or competing services with itself yet, but I do know that they have some very cool tech coming out and I'm excited to at least try out some of it.

How to take people's money, MBA school 101:2013) charge everyone monthly subscription , or pretend to give services for free and make money undermining your user's privacy

Well?

As an MBA student, I can verify this.

I was at an industry event a few months ago, and they spent like 30 minutes on why they were in love with Salesforce PaaS. Everything is a term subscription.

As an end user I don't see what is wrong with this model. When you get a piece of hardware today, you expect it to last you for a long time. One way to do this is with constant updates and what not. Do you think you are entitled for these updates? I don't think so.

A simple example is paper maps vs digital maps.

With digital maps, you have the advantage that if a new road pops up, you can see it right away. Well that takes engineers to maintain the system and keep it alive and someone to actually put in the data. With the paper version, you would have to buy the map all over again....

Yeah, the scaling doesn't work out financially. An entire rack for 480 users just isn't the economy of scale that can serve enough users to overcome fixed costs. Compare to, say, a database where one box can serve 10000 users (I know, apples, oranges, but still...).

There needs to be another jump in miniaturization and density for this to gain traction.

Yeah, the scaling doesn't work out financially. An entire rack for 480 users just isn't the economy of scale that can serve enough users to overcome fixed costs. Compare to, say, a database where one box can serve 10000 users (I know, apples, oranges, but still...).

There needs to be another jump in miniaturization and density for this to gain traction.

The cooling requirements alone look like something they'll have to work out.

The cooling requirements alone look like something they'll have to work out.

No kidding. 800 W x 20 servers = 16,000 W. And that's just one rack!

6Mb is pretty doable in theory for most broadband connections. Problem is that at peak times - which by definition is when most people will want to use it - you can't count on that. Your typical 10Mb home connection quite possibly can drop below 6Mb at moments and all it takes is a second here, a second there to ruin it. And what if someone else wants to go online... say the sister starts surfing Facebook on her smartphone? This is just for 720p video too, 1080p likely will exceed 10Mb.

Just fixed HW costs alone, 24 users per box, how much per box? If I use assumption they're same as a standard high end server, what 10k? (probably more due to all that custom silicon and IP) Using the 10k figure for hardware alone, 120k per 480 users of up front hardware (minus rackspace, management server, cabling, network, staff blah blah blah) = 250 bucks they need to extract from each subscriber just to write off the hardware. I bet once other costs are factored in you're talking some serious dollars per user just to break even.

Power alone is monstrous, throw in cost of management, staff, colo access / dedicated network access to ISPs to reduce latency, can't see this succeeding as a mainstream cloud gaming solution (assuming ppl aren't going to pay 100 bucks+ a month for the service alone + buy the games on top). Its gotta be able to be flogged as cheaper than buying your own console remember (since the lag and need for connectivity will inevitably make it sub par experience compared to local).

For mainstream use. still looks like a hammer in search of a nail, but at least they're trying and the balance is definitely tilting.

A variant could be great though for corporations who have to run multiple graphics workstations (assuming not TOO high end) and want to virtualise/VDI or make for some crazy CUDA/OpenCL number crunching, never underestimated the pathological desire of big organisations to STANDARDISE EVERYTHING (no more "I can't use a virtual desktop because I'm a special CAD user" excuses), and could be a dream ticket for those with high end compute requirements (scientific and *spits on floor* HFT/financial modelling for example). Back on that 10k assumption for example, thats a lot less than 24 'pro' cards, with all the advantages of centralisation/virtualisation you can then leverage.

As for those peeps who want to run their own gaming cloud @ home: how much do you think 12 high end kepler cards costs. And your power bill. Now if they released a consumer variant (say with two not 12 cards) then maybe it will be interesting but can't see it being more than a niche market - requires techie setup, fast always on upstream speeds, power/noise/always on rack (my missus doesn't even like me leaving my low power, spins drives down if idle NAS unit no chance I'll get to run a full blown noisy server box 24x7 for video friggin games), is it worth their effort for such a niche market?

Virtual Worlds plz come back! 8v8 head to head Mechwarrior with 3D VR goggles... That's at least 30$ for 15 min. Other than cable head ends, where else is VR hardware going to go? Mobile gaming set for quality increase, next gen consoles set for 3D. Bored of playing at home alone, like to see how to get people back into arcades, sitting down for immersive mind blowing graphics, my 680 just wont cut it & the developers are too busy programming for consoles.

What about a distributed system instead of a centralized system? I don't use my graphics card all the time, why not let someone down the street use it when I'm not?

They'd be using your power and 6M of your internet connection to do so per user, vice versa. If you're open to it then I guess you could spend your own hard earned setting up such a cluster, there's probably nothing stopping you aside from finances and practicality (and telling the world 'hey i gots free cycles', have fun with that!!!!)

If anything goes into prod it would be 'distributed' anyway using something like GSLB for DNS distribution to send you to the closest cluster (or to failover if primary is down). Pretty standard

What about a distributed system instead of a centralized system? I don't use my graphics card all the time, why not let someone down the street use it when I'm not?

Latency. It's hard enough to get low latency from the fastest data center pipes. Also, home machines vary too greatly in specs and usage patterns to guarantee a consistent experience. I participate in folding@home but that doesn't care about latency.

They'd be using your power and 6M of your internet connection to do so per user, vice versa. If you're open to it then I guess you could spend your own hard earned setting up such a cluster, there's probably nothing stopping you aside from finances and practicality (and telling the world 'hey i gots free cycles', have fun with that!!!!)

Everyone and their brother wants to do "Netflix streaming, with games". I mean, it sounds cool. And it works for movies, right? Except it's not the same thing, at all.

Solutions like this focus on the technology problem - which is necessary - but as the article points out completely ignores the business side, which is where the real problem has been (and is). Netflix, after all, only succeeded because they built up a huge business off the backs of another - the established local video rental system, which had been in existence (and still, to some small degree, still is) for decades, and which already fought and won many a battle with content providers and creators.

Not only is the tech behind streaming games more complicated than that of streaming a movie or TV show, so are the business aspects. If the focus truly is to deliver "low end PC class gaming" to devices that can't currently handle that - like tablets, or low-powered devices like the Ouya (and innumerable Android set top boxes currently being released ahead of it) then that is a battle that will eventually be lost, or at least lost to the point where something like this isn't economically feasible - portable hardware is only going to get better, of course, as NVidia themselves know (and are leading the charge on).

What I'm saying is this seems like a lot of work and money for what will essentially end up being a niche market.

So of course NVidia product gives better performance to NVidia users, that should be expected. I wonder if there's a trick similar to the PhysX trick by using a lower-end NVidia card in an ATI rig, can we use a low end NVidia card for the 10ms encoding/decoding enhancement but still be an ATI user?

That aside, I've thought it before and will do so again.I'd like to see a gaming/internet cafe use one of these over 10GBit LAN to service their computers, it could seriously upgrade the experience without having to frequently change out end-hardware.

The issue there is, what does a pair of these cost, plus a control server, so I imagine 5U total in storage, that's not much. 2000watts + equipment cost and licensing. Could it make for a viable business model in a large city?

Could it be a viable way to run LAN tournaments ensuring that no one has the "hardware advantage" forcing everyone to an equal playing field?

It's a shame they are so focused on this single use because it seems there is anough power under that 2U hood to fill a 10Gbit connection with 15,000 "conventional" video streams.

Batch compression, compress the original to the quality grades you want, then its just an I/O problem. Since you can archive away the uncompressed original it´s saving you space. A single low end cluster will push a lot of bandwith if the I/O is sequential and the datastructure and caching is done right.

It seems like Nvida has a strategy of being everywhere.A cool thing would be if they loaded a rack of their stuff and went on tour, professional star trek tournament, massive multiplayer battles and so on all streamed.

In reality i suspect that this is something that in the end might bridge the gap between browser level games and low end "real" games, all to give Nvidia a small edge and a little bit bigger market share. Run a commercial campaign with a free week of angry birds, all streamed to your device, got an Tegra offload your pesky physics to the net and save battery, Get HQ cutscenes...

Not to mention differencing Nvidias products from competitors is also a success.

Andrew Cunningham / Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue.